But if you are trying to establish a fantastical "all other things equal" type scenario to ask me if I TRUELY do have more moral and ethical concern for an adult frog than a 12 week old fetus.... then save your digits and simply accept that yes, I do. What I opened this post with holds true.

You might as well be asking me to compare a rock to a frog. Because, again in the fantastical scenario where we are SOLELY considering those two entities in ISOLATION from all else............ that is indeed how I view it. In isolation from other moral and ethical concerns, a 12 week old fetus is the moral equivalent of a rock to me.

Not intentionally no. But I genuinely am not sure what point (s)he is trying to uncover with this line of inquiry. It SEEMS (s)he is just testing my claim that I hold more moral and ethical concern for a sentient entity than an entirely non-sentient one. And the fact is I do.

(The last piece of your post was meant to be in some other post, I assume).

You could have saved your digits too, with a shorter reply. You are correct, I did want to just get confirmation/clarification from you that leaving extraneous factors aside, you would if you had to chose a life, chose the life of a frog rather than the life of a 16 weeks foetus. And now I'm clear.

As I said, I think that this is deeply counter-intuitive, it not what most people's intuitions and moral sense would tell them is "right", and I think the position of yours undermines your entire argument.

(The last piece of your post was meant to be in some other post, I assume).

Which part? The "not intentionall no" part? I quite often amalgamate replies to multiple users into a single post. A habit I picked up from two other forums which frown upon users making sequential posts. I see no harm in it, as each user can see which bits are replying to them from what I quoted.

Originally Posted by talkingshop

You could have saved your digits too, with a shorter reply. You are correct, I did want to just get confirmation/clarification from you that leaving extraneous factors aside, you would if you had to chose a life, chose the life of a frog rather than the life of a 16 weeks foetus. And now I'm clear.

I am not sure being short is in my nature. I prefer to be understood. And I find, when people are genuinely interested in reading, they understand me better in 100 words than they do in 10. It also likely comes from the size of the tomes on Science, Philosophy and Morality that I study and read. When you read books going into 1000s of pages while forming your ideas..... distilling those ideas into 2 sentences tends to be beyond you.

So I have given up trying to be short. I focus instead on trying to be CLEAR. Perhaps I am a relic in the Twitter and Vime generation and their eroded attention spans. But so be it. I can live with that

Originally Posted by talkingshop

As I said, I think that this is deeply counter-intuitive, it not what most people's intuitions and moral sense would tell them is "right", and I think the position of yours undermines your entire argument.

It does not undermine the strength of the argument. It MIGHT undermine my ability to get others to accept or even adopt my positions. But that is a different thing. I would prefer to be consistent AND honest first, and win people to my position second. I think too many people share those priorities but REVERSED.

But I do not tend to explain my position in terms of fetuses and frogs. I tend to explain it in ways that are clearer and easier to accept. But if someone, testing perhaps if I am consistent in my views, brings it down to the level of fetuses and frogs they are going to find that I am consistent and honest. Even if that consistency and honesty risks losing the audience who are otherwise "on my side" up to that point.

But as I said, and will likely keep saying, I mediate moral and ethical concern on entities having some level of the faculty of sentience, consciousness and subjective awareness. An entity WITH that faculty, in any operational capacity, shows up on the moral radar. An entity without it, does not.

And so I am not speaking lightly when I say a 12 week old fetus is the moral equivalent of a rock to me. They both simply do not show up on the radar/scan. Certainly not in the face of the people going "oh but look at it's ikkle wikkle fingers!"

As I said, I think that this is deeply counter-intuitive, it not what most people's intuitions and moral sense would tell them is "right", and I think the position of yours undermines your entire argument.

Why?

Genuine question.

And full disclosure : I feel I would have more ethical concern for the foetus in your scenario, but I suspect that it's as much an emotional response of the type Nozzferrahtoo referred to earlier as anything else, and on any case, definitely gut instinct rather than a logically thought out evaluation. And since it requires a ridiculously contrived hypothetical scenario to get to that, one could just as easily contrive other scenarios which would go the other way : what if merely to keep the non sentient foetus alive it was necessary to inflict horrendous pain on the conscious frog for six or seven months? Etc. All rather pointless, TBH.

But I am interested in what it is about Nozferrahtoo's ability not to react emotionally to your scenario that makes you think that this undermines his "entire argument"? I don't see how it makes any difference myself.

It does not undermine the strength of the argument. It MIGHT undermine my ability to get others to accept or even adopt my positions. But that is a different thing. I would prefer to be consistent AND honest first, and win people to my position second. I think too many people share those priorities but REVERSED.

But I do not tend to explain my position in terms of fetuses and frogs. I tend to explain it in ways that are clearer and easier to accept. But if someone, testing perhaps if I am consistent in my views, brings it down to the level of fetuses and frogs they are going to find that I am consistent and honest. Even if that consistency and honesty risks losing the audience who are otherwise "on my side" up to that point.

But as I said, and will likely keep saying, I mediate moral and ethical concern on entities having some level of the faculty of sentience, consciousness and subjective awareness. An entity WITH that faculty, in any operational capacity, shows up on the moral radar. An entity without it, does not.

And so I am not speaking lightly when I say a 12 week old fetus is the moral equivalent of a rock to me. They both simply do not show up on the radar/scan. Certainly not in the face of the people going "oh but look at it's ikkle wikkle fingers!"

Fair enough - your argument convinces yourself, but I don't think that is it a good argument, or that it will convince others.

Your argument goes something like this I think; in deciding whether it is ethical to take foetal life, we should look at how and why we value life generally, and as you have correctly pointed out, we value an animal more than a tree, and certain animals/creatures more than others, and human beings most of all - and you intuit, and propose that most people intuit, that this is do with consciousness, sentience, and a capacity for subjective experience. So far so good, and I think most people would agree with this.

But having got this far, developing a moral position which is based on our intuitions, and consistent with how we view things generally, you then introduce your "switched on" condition, which leads us the position that we should find the life of e.g. a frog as worth more than that of a 16 weeks foetus. But we don't find that - that doesn't seem intuitively right to me, or to most people I suggest - in fact it seems clearly "wrong".

So for me, and most people I suggest, there is something wrong with your reasoning if it leads us to this position. What is wrong with it? It seems to me it must be around your (somewhat arbitrary) "switched on" condition. I suggest that most of us intuit that the life of a 16 week foetus is worth way more than that of a frog, despite the frog's consciousness etc. being "switched on", and the foetus' not being "switched on" yet. So our valuing consciousness, sentience, etc. can't be entirely dependent on it being currently "switched on", but must be, I suggest, related to the capability (and almost certainty) of developing that consciousness, sentience, etc.

And full disclosure : I feel I would have more ethical concern for the foetus in your scenario, but I suspect that it's as much an emotional response of the type Nozzferrahtoo referred to earlier as anything else, and on any case, definitely gut instinct rather than a logically thought out evaluation. And since it requires a ridiculously contrived hypothetical scenario to get to that, one could just as easily contrive other scenarios which would go the other way : what if merely to keep the non sentient foetus alive it was necessary to inflict horrendous pain on the conscious frog for six or seven months? Etc. All rather pointless, TBH.

But I am interested in what it is about Nozferrahtoo's ability not to react emotionally to your scenario that makes you think that this undermines his "entire argument"? I don't see how it makes any difference myself.

Tonic is going to go apeshyte when he realises that the Constitutional Assembly is reluctant to accept religious argumentation as 'factual'.

Do these people not know how Science-based the religious are?

A moderator (a possible member of the RCC sect) has suspended their "FATWA" on me for expressing my protected religious views.

I don't believe in fairy stories.

Let's not forget, females have been drowned or burned as a witch. Those scores and scores and scores of HATE FILLED 'FATWA' posts calling me out as a WITCH and member of a coven, AND TO BE PERMA-BANNED, still remain undeleted on politics.ie threads (plural).

It seems their sect is untouchable here on politics.ie. They have a Board appointee, who has OUTED HIMSELF; he is a member of same sect. He is homophobic and an extreme right wing fascist. He went apeshyte on me for denouncing US fascism. Once again, my views were protected, even as a visitor to US.

We must always be vigilant.

Yes, Lumpy, the Citizens' Assembly are leading the way in sorting out factual submissions from the chaff.

PS

To sum up, the sect think their religious views are sacrosanct, and to hell with other people's protected religious views.

I'm no fan of the Assembly at all in the first place as I am more than certain of the venality of the Irish politician in using 99 useful idiots to delay and distract from the job they should be doing.

It is somewhat heartening at the same time to see the level-headedness of the comments from the various tables on the 'inundation' tactic attempted by the anti-abortion crowd and secondly by the simple pointing out that the religious viewpoint on the issue appears to be free of fact.

It is about time that nonsense was called. Can't wait for the Holy Owner of Science, Tonic, to pop along and explain how the 'pro-life' submissions had massive amounts of Science in it altogether and that the Assembly just didn't understand it because it was written half in Gaeilge and half in Scientific Aramaic.

99% of 'pro-life' argumentation can be summed up as 'Because Jesus'. And that's it.

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